Indonesia needs legal breakthrough to boost renewable energy

JAKARTA: Indonesia needs to remove a host of legal barriers if it wants to boost development in alternative energy sources such as geothermal, solar and hydropower plants, a senior government official has said.

Rida Mulyana, the director general of new and renewable energy at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry said on Monday that the Forestry Law should, for example, be revised in order to be able to accelerate the development of geothermal power plants.

“Without a legal breakthrough, much of the geothermal reserves cannot be developed because they contravene the Forestry Law,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) conference on clean and renewable energy.